Evidence – The Facts of Child Development and Early Learning

Over the years I have spent observing in preschool and day care classrooms

I’ve heard many teachers say, “I don’t care what Piaget, Dewey, and Gesell said about child development! MY three-year-olds can sit quietly in chapel without wiggling, listen to me in Circle Time for 25 minutes and ALL my boys are potty trained!” Riiight.

Then I spend a day with the children under the reign of these queens of early education and I learn that their classrooms are not fun places to be. They often turn out to be sit-and-listen, sit-and-listen, sit-and-listen, time-out-for-not-listening, wiggle-and-whine and stampede-for-the-playground-like-an Orange is the New Black-prison-escape.

A good preschool teacher knows and believes the facts of child development. “She” (because let’s face it, we are a workforce of women) familiarizes herself with the expectations for what her children will be able to do, what they will understand, and how they will behave in her classroom and she uses that knowledge to plan and react appropriately.

In your vast amounts of spare time, I urge you to do some research on child development and familiarize yourself with the theories of Ames and Ilg with the Gesell Institute, Brofenbrenner, Erickson, Freud (meh), Maslow, Piaget, and Vygotsky.

Most of the best theorists agree there are three areas of development: body, mind, and spirit (some theorists divide spirit into social and emotional) and that the evidence shows the patterns and influences of development are:

• Development begins with the child’s interest and focus on himself and moves outward to family, friends, other persons, other things, other concepts in the environment.                                              
• Physical development proceeds from general to specific movement, from head to toe, and from the center of the body out to the arms, legs, fingers, and toes                                            
• Development is continuous and interrelated
• Development seems to occur in predictable stages and usually each child moves through these stages in the same sequence, but at individualized rates   
• Each developmental stage has its place and purpose and usually a child must go through each of them in order to reach the next one.                                                                                                        
• The influences on development are: heredity, environment, birth order, general and specific health and social conditions.
• By far, the persons who have the most influence on a child’s development are his parents.

By the Way – It has also been theorized and proven that race and ethnicity alone do not cause developmental differences. As I can personally and genetically attest, the Irish are not always drunk, the Scotch are not always tight with their money, and people from Poland have no problem with lightbulbs!

Next Blog: Believe It or Leave It – Part 2

 

I always loved the lady in the insurance commercial who said, “That’s not how it works!” and that is exactly what I find myself saying when I visit some preschool classrooms. After 40 years in the business, I have figured out a number of things about what makes a program for children from birth to age five, worthy of recommendation – and what makes me sad to see happening (and not happening) in less worthy programs these days.                         

Good programs are based on a logical Curricular Continuum that explains the cyclical nature of the learning and teaching process and is founded on proven facts and reputable theories of child development and learning. Good teachers are those who are familiar with, trust in, and completely rely on these facts and theories so their program’s mission is accomplished with efficiency, enjoyment, and excellence. I think we can all agree that our mission is the optimal development of a Whole Child, healthy and able in Body, Mind, and Spirit.

Programs that do not follow a logical plan for education that is based on the factual evidence on child development and research on learning and the brain or do not follow this logical pattern from beginning to end are often not high quality programs.

My suggested Curricular Continuum shows the continuing process of teaching and learning in young children. Take a look:  wordpress-curriculum-continuum

It begins with belief in and total acceptance of the proven (and reproven) Evidence on child development and learning. It moves to the establishment of a set of Strength Expectations (standards, milestones, objectives, whatever) based on that evidence. Most public K-12 schools use the Common Core Standards, but early education programs use a variety of standards depending on their chosen curriculum. The system then proceeds to the establishment and maintenance of a safe physical, emotional, and educational Environment and the creation of specifically designed learning Experiences, Executed carefully with a strong dose of the Human Factor and Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP). The final step is a factual Evaluation of each child’s strengths and needs that mandates the use of his strengths to create a plan for meeting his needs and then begins the process again by returning to new evidence-based expectations for accomplishing the mission of optimal learning.

No matter what formal curriculum a program is using, it should include the elements of Eclecticism and Elasticity (designing your program around the best of the published curricula and changing it to match the needs of your families) and based on the pattern of this continuum. Each of my blogs will be based on aspects of these elements.

Evidence, Expectations, Environment, Experiences, Execution, and Evaluation are the Elements of Excellence in Early Education. This IS the way it works.

Next Blog: Evidence: Believe It or Leave It! Part 1

This is the introduction to a series of blogs on the creation and maintenance of a good early learning program.  Mrs. B., as her children call her, has taught preschoolers, teachers, directors, and parents for a long, long time.  She has been a daycare parent, a preschool parent, a sub, an assistant teacher, a lead teacher in daycare, Head Start, and faith-based programs, an  education/curriculum supervisor, a program director, a teacher trainer, parent trainer, curriculum consultant, and child development specialist.  She has studied children and child development for forty years, and continues to do so.

She has driven the bus, changed the diapers, wiped the noses, scraped off the glitter and glue, swept the floors, taken out the trash, and holds a couple of formal degrees in early childhood education and curriculum. (BS and MAT degrees in English, Early Childhood Education, and Curriculum).

She has dealt with nervous parents, fussy parents, angry parents and absentee parents.  She has planned the budget, hired and fired the staff, and met with the boards, the health and safety inspectors and the licensing agents.

It is her intention to award good preschool teachers for their work with some advice that will lessen their workload, create an efficient system for organizing and designing learning opportunities and present a set of practices for presentation and assessment that will engender excellence in early education.

Each blog will be based on the steps of Anne’s Curricular Continuum, pictured in the next blog . She hopes you find them humorous, blunt, plain-spoken, and enjoyable to read, interesting to discuss, and most importantly, practical for use in your classroom.

(Author’s Note: I do not care to have my picture taken, but suffice it to say, I have not changed for 65 years, so use your imagination.

Next Blog: This is How it Works!